How to Avoid Wedding Day Disasters

One of my favorite episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond is when Ray and Debra sit down to watch their wedding video on their anniversary. Debra snuggles up to Ray on the couch, already awash in nostalgia. The video starts and scenes from their wedding years ago begin to unfold as she sits in the arms of her loving husband. To her shocking dismay, the screen blinks and the Superbowl cuts in, just as Debra’s walking down the aisle with her father. Her idiot husband had obviously taped over their most sacred memory together with nothing other than a sore spot in their marriage – sports.

That episode is so funny to me personally because one of the only mishaps/mistakes/regrets from our wedding experience was that I almost never got my wedding video. In fact, it was two years before it saw the light of day. We inquired as to its whereabouts from the friend we asked to video it several times, but got no clear answer and still have no idea why there was a delay. Whether it ended up being some sort of miscommunication between us and our friend or a horrible accident that happened after the fact that we’ll never know about, we had long given up hope of having visual record of our wedding other than our wedding photos.

And just like Debra Barone, I had to get over it.

That wasn’t the only disaster. The cake at my wedding was slowly falling over (thankfully it was cut before completely toppling over). My organist backed out the day before the ceremony (we bought a CD to play the wedding march with). Stuff happens. Just last week I got a call from a friend whose van was stolen, along with the only copy of her wedding photos on CD. Thankfully, her photographer had kept a copy of the best shots.

At the end of the day, the little details aren’t life-and-death. Not even a wedding video. Not even your pictures. At least they shouldn’t be. Sure, it’s great to have all your plans come together smoothly, but if something goes wrong, remember that your relationships are whole lot more significant than any wedding detail or memento.  

To avoid wedding-day disasters, keep these tips in mind:

• Don’t let a friend do a favor for the wedding if something going wrong could damage the relationship.
• Get details and pricing in writing from vendors.
• Double-check duties a week or so before the wedding to make sure everyone’s on board and understands their responsibilities.
• Delegate every detail to your wedding planner or organizer the day of your wedding so yours is stress-free.
• Relax. There’s no possible way everything’s going to go completely perfect. Look at the mishaps as adding colorful memories to your big day.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if the best man didn’t get his tux fitted just right or that Uncle Mertel missed all the photos because he was gorging on cheesecake bites in the reception hall kitchen. It does matter that two people have made the single most challenging pledge they’ve ever taken to serve and love each other for the rest of their lives. And the icing on the cake is that they spent their money wisely while they did it. No regrets.